Electrical powered artificial lighting has become ubiquitous in modern society. Common uses for electrical lighting devices include, for example, in homes, hospitals, buildings of commercial and other enterprise establishments, as well as in various outdoor settings. Traditional light fixtures or luminaires have tended to be relatively dumb, in that the light fixtures or luminaires power ON/OFF, and in some cases dim, usually in response to user activation of a relatively simple input device.
Since the advent of electronic light emitters, such as light emitting diodes (LEDs), for general lighting type illumination application, lighting equipment has become increasingly intelligent with incorporation of sensors, programmed controller and network communication capabilities. Automated control, particularly for enterprise installations or hospitals, may respond to a variety of sensed conditions, such as daylight or ambient light level and occupancy. The controllers for existing systems have interfaces to receive user input for lighting functions. There have been proposals and some products that offer touch or gesture inputs. The surfaces of the interfaces for controllers sense the user inputs; however, problems arise with erroneous or unrecognized sensed input at the controller.
A need exists for providing an improved interface module for controllers in lighting systems.